Maand: april 2016

Mass immigration has turned into a crisis that places a big burden on first world countries which aim to maintain their humanitarian standards. To reduce the streams of refugees, European nations have made deals with Turkish president annex dictator Erdogan, who promises to reduce the influx in exchange for visa free travel for Turkish citizens and other rewards.

There is good reason however, to believe that the streams will grow drastically in the decades ahead. To understand why, take a look at some of the below graphs:

Projected agricultural productivity change between 2003 and 2080

As can be seen, Europe and North America are projected to witness an increase in agricultural yields. For Africa and South Asia, the outcome is projected to be far more catastrophic instead. It’s thought that the viking era was caused by overpopulation in Scandinavia. It’s also thought that a temperature drop in Northern Europe led to the Germanic invasions of the Roman empire. This is what tends to happen to populations that suddenly find themselves above carrying capacity, as a result of a sudden decrease in agricultural productivity of their land.

Youth bulge

Who leaves his country of origin in search of distant lands to colonize? Generally speaking, young men with poor prospects at home are most inclined to migrate to distant lands. Where do most of the world’s young people live? In third world countries.

The map above shows the percentage of the population aged beneath 15 years in 2013. By now most of this cohort is in their twenties. The fertility rate in most of the Middle East and North Africa has dropped very rapidly in recent years, but this has no effect of course on young people who have already been born. If the fertility rate in these nations has dropped because of overpopulation, the current youth bulge in these nations will have to deal with the consequences of ecological overshoot.

Population explosion in sub-Saharan Africa

Although great progress has been made in addressing population growth in the Middle East and Northern Africa, in Sub-Saharan Africa, we have been less than successful. In fact, many African countries have seen stable high fertility rates for decades.

In the period of 1950-1955, the fertility rate in Uganda was estimated at 6.9 children. In 1985-1990, the fertility rate was actually higher, at 7.1 children per women. By 2010-2015, the fertility rate has dropped to 6.38 children per woman. In the meantime however, the infant mortality rate dropped from 116 per 1000, to 61 per 1000, meaning that more of these children grow up to reach the age of reproduction themselves.

In Nigeria, the fertility rate is 6.01 children per woman, hardly any different from the peak fertility rate of 6.76 children decades ago. In the last period of five years, the fertility rate went down by 0.04 children. At this pace, a replacement fertility rate that would stabilize the Nigerian population would be reached 500 years from now.

There are however even worse situations found in some other African nations. In Congo, the fertility rate was estimated at 6.3 in 2007/2008. In 2013/2014, the fertility rate was estimated at 6.6 children per woman. In other words, fertility had gone up, rather than declined.

What causes this? Lack of access to contraception is one problem for certain regions, but a large part of the problem that’s taboo to discuss is the cultural factors that cause women to give birth to so many children. In parts of Nigeria, 81% of women desire more than four children. Eight percent of the women desire more than fifteen children.

Contrast this with Europe. In Western Germany in 2004, 16.6% of women desired no children. Just 3.7% of the women desire more than four children. The mean desired fertility rate was 1.73 in Western Germany, which is a desired fertility rate below replacement level. It should be clear that the conventional feel-good solution of providing contraception to women who desire contraception but have no access that has become established liberal wisdom is not going to be enough to solve our problem.

It’s often thought that economic development reduces desired fertility rates, but this is not entirely clear. Some studies suggest that this has cause and effect backwards, that declining fertility rates actually led to economic development as nations temporarily ended up in a situation with few elderly and few children who need to be taken care of.

Interestingly, although quite some progress was made in reducing African fertility until the 90’s, the economic development in Africa that occurred since the 1990’s has not led to a further decline in fertility. Nigerian GDP per capita grew enormously since 2000 and continues to grow rapidly today. Fertility rates did not decline significantly as a consequence however. If anything, economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa allows these nations to maintain high fertility rates that would otherwise lead to a Malthusian catastrophe.

There exists no consensus on what causes the high desired African fertility rates. If we’re lucky, desired high fertility rates are largely a product of the high fertility rates women observe around them. African women who actually have more than eight children tend to be more ambivalent about their high fertility. Providing access to contraception would thus lead to a reduction in desired fertility rates, which would lead to more demand for contraception, in a positive feedback loop.

More likely however, entrenched cultural factors play a role. It’s observed in multicultural societies around the world, that Muslims have higher fertility rates than Christians, Atheists and Hindus. More devout religious observers also tend to desire higher fertility rates. Most worrisome of all perhaps is the observation that tribal conflict between different ethnic groups leads to higher desired fertility rates in some nations. Palestinian authorities in Gaza were opposed to family planning for this reason. A look at maps of global cultural diversity shows a rough trend of lower fertility rates in less culturally diverse nations:

Finally, most problematic perhaps would be the possibility that genetic factors play a role in the high desired fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s observed around the world that African girls enter puberty earlier than European girls, who enter puberty earlier than East Asian girls. Doctors have noticed that African and Aboriginal babies seem to mature earlier, at an age where Native American and Asian babies are still very helpless.

If children from certain ethnic groups innately require far more parental investment than children from other ethnic groups, it would make sense that women from some ethnic groups are more interested in birth spacing and reducing their fertility rates than other groups. As a consequence, we may find that addressing population growth in sub-Saharan Africa will be much more difficult than it proved to be in other places.

As unlikely as it might seem, renewable electricity generation is likely to decline. With cheap solar panels and wind turbines around the corner this might seem incomprehensible, but to understand why renewable electricity is in big trouble, ask yourself what the main present source of renewable electricity is. The answer to this question is hydropower. According to the IEA, 85% of renewable electricity comes from hydropower.

The IEA and some other big organization expect to see large growth in hydropower generation, but this increase appears unlikely for a number of reasons. When it comes to the impact of climate change on hydropower, the IEA’s roadmap that projects a doubling by 2050 in hydropower based itself on one study done in 2012. Looking up the study that the IEA uses, we find the following sentence:

This study has not examined the impact of increased frequency of droughts and floods, as forecast in many places with climate change. If droughts and floods become more frequent, this scenario would severely impacts hydropower production.

In other words, the argument made here that hydropower won’t be impacted by climate change is not very persuasive. Countries around the world have faced electricity rationing as a result of drought that are linked to climate change. Currently, Venezuela struggles with electricity rationing as a consequence of a severe drought.

To build new hydropower facilities faces a number of different problems. In China, 22% of water used by society is water that’s lost through evaporation from the massive reservoirs that China has built for its hydropower facilities. Nations that face a looming threat of water shortages would thus be unwise to build such massive reservoirs.

Scientific models always come with a degree of uncertainty. Whereas investment in new hydropower facilities may make sense in a stable climate, a changing climate leaves policymakers to pray that local precipitation patterns will indeed change in a fashion expected by climatologists.

Generally speaking, precipitation in our changing climate is expected to occur more commonly in the form of sudden downpours, rather than small amounts spread throughout the year. This places a big burden on hydropower facilities. When too much precipitation happens in a short periods, dams can collapse. In 1972, intense precipitation as a result of typhoon Nina led to a number of catastrophic dam failures in China. An estimated 172,000 people died as a result of these breaches.

Perhaps most important to note is the effect that climate change will have on soil erosion. Our hydroelectricity generating dams currently suffer from the effects of the decline in storage capacity of our reservoirs due to soil erosion. Dams currently lose around 1% of their storage every year.

Total global storage capacity peaked in 2006, as a result of the spread of sediment into the reservoirs, whereas storage capacity per person peaked even earlier in 1987, due to rapid population growth. As the capacity declines, so does the ability to produce electricity.

What’s most likely to happen in the coming decades is that a large share of existing hydroelectricity dams will gradually cease to function due to different factors. Some will face severe droughts and as a result prove unable to generate power. Other dams are likely to simply collapse, whether due to poor maintenance or as a result of the inevitable drastic increase in extreme weather events we will face in the years ahead.

I would like you to engage in a small thought experiment. Let us imagine we live in a small tribe on a forested island, that produces saws from trees. The trees are then used to produce new saws. The saws are relatively brittle and can chop down just ten trees, before it breaks down and a new one has to be produced.

We will estimate that it takes five trees to make a saw. Four trees are used to melt the iron that’s used for the blade, one tree is used to produce the handle for the saw. The other five trees that a saw can chop down are used by the tribe, to repair the huts they live in and to make a fire that’s used to cook food.

So far, the tribe can sustain its activities. It chops down ten trees, uses five of those to make a new saw, then uses five trees to repair its huts and cook food. What this means is that the tribe can continue to chop down trees, as long as there are trees. The destruction continues unabated, until there is nothing left to destroy.

But now, let us presume that there are different types of trees to exploit for our tribe. The trees our tribe is familiar with are known as “good trees”, there are a hundred of them left on their island. There are also sick trees, that are sometimes rotten on the inside. There are fifty of them. One out of ten sick trees is too full of rotten wood to use, despite taking just as much effort to chop down.

In addition to the sick trees, there are fifty oak trees. Oak trees are sacred to our tribe, so they don’t cut them down. Their wood is also so hard, that a saw that attempts to chop down such trees can only chop down eight of them, before it breaks down.

What happens when our tribe runs out of good trees? Our tribe decides to cut down sick trees. Our tribe is lucky, until it cuts down the tenth sick tree, whose wood is so degraded that it’s effectively useless. Now the tribe is left with nine trees. It uses five of them to prepare food to avoid starvation, then it has four trees left to produce a new saw. It uses four of them to melt iron, but now is left without any tree to use for the handle. The tribe can’t cut down any more trees and their society falls apart.

But now, let’s presume that after fifty good tribes have been cut down, someone comes up with a mechanism by which the tribe can use just four trees for cooking and repairing homes. A little mound of dirt around the bowl ensures that less heat is lost to the environment and the water cooks faster. The member of the tribe, who hoped to reduce his tribe’s reliance on wood, is treated as a hero.

But what happens? Instead of collapsing after the good trees have been destroyed, the tribe can continue its destructive orgy on the island, chopping down fifty sick trees as well. After all, although the pace at which good trees are chopped down may have slowed down, the sick trees became a viable resource to exploit as well.

Similarly, if our tribe discovered some technique to use three trees to melt the iron, the tribe would eventually be faced with the question of whether it should chop down its sacred oak trees or accept starvation and perish. Quite clearly, the sacred oak trees would be lost.

What we see here is Jevon’s paradox. More efficient use of a resource means that more of the resource will be used. This was first observed with coal use in Victorian era England. This is in complete contrast to what we think happens. For environmental considerations, we drive our cars less, eat less meat, stop drinking bottled water and stop heating our homes. We use our resources more efficiently and waste less of them. If Jevon’s paradox applies here too, our attempt to save our environment would merely mean increased destruction.

Let’s return to our island. One of our tribe’s elders has made some calculations. She estimates that if more than sixty percent of the island’s trees are lost, the wind would be so hard that the other forty percent would eventually fall during storms. With all trees gone, the wind will blow the fertile soil away, the island would become a barren rock and all life on the island would perish, including our villagers.

What does our tribe’s elder recommend? If she is ignorant, she would insist that the tribe has to build mounds around the cooking bowl, to ensure that the rate of trees lost is reduced by ten percent. This ensures that our tribe buys itself some time, but eventually begins to exploit the sick trees too.

But what if our tribal elder is wise? Our tribal elder tells the villagers who are cooking food to sacrifice some food to the Gods. The villagers now have to cook more food. Six trees are used in the process. Just four trees are now left for those who have to produce a new saw. Those tasked with producing the new saw fail to carry out their task. The tribe can no longer continue to chop down trees.

Now that its unsustainable lifestyle has been destroyed, the tribe is faced with a crisis. This crisis is likely to be painful, but the earlier the crisis struck, the more trees were left on the island. This means that whatever transition the tribe will have to make will hopefully go smoother. An island with more trees should typically sustain more villagers.

So, as an analogy, perhaps if you really want to help avoid global warming, the best solution is not to ride a bus, but to buy an SUV. Of course, this is not sufficient to persuade you. The question you have to ask yourself however is as following: Do you live frugally because you think this will genuinely address climate change, or do you live frugally because it appeals to you at a deeper, guttural level?

Living frugally allows you to feel as if you are not morally complicit in the destruction. In addition, it allowed your ancestors to perform tasks more efficiently than a competing tribe. A frugal tribe that can feed ten people with a plot of land can typically conquer the land of a tribe that can feed just five people with a similar plot of land.

So what are you supposed to do with this information? Are you supposed to swap your bicycle for an SUV? This is not the point I am arguing. Rather, my point is that mainstream environmentalism is unlikely to address our crisis. Instead, a more radical and pervasive critique of the totality that we have come to inhabit is necessary.

If the impact we have on our environment is bad, the solution is not to be less wasteful in the processes we carry out. Rather, the processes we carry out have to be rejected altogether and exchanged for processes that serve to enrich life, rather than to function as a burden on life. This is in fact what non-human organisms do.

All organisms have an ecological niche, through which they help other lifeforms thrive. Just like us, a beaver chops down a tree to build a bed for itself, but rather than building suburban neighborhoods with sterilized grass lawns and enormous parking lots to house the beds in, the beaver’s dam provides a habitat for young fish. In addition, the bacteria that can thrive at the bottom of the beaver dam break down pesticides and remove excessive nutrients from the stream.

What does it mean for us humans? One outcome of this strain of thinking is to reconsider our role within our environment. In what way can we sustain ourselves while serving to enrich life and help other species thrive? Through permaculture principles it’s possible to restore degraded soils and restore life to a damaged environment.

When large mammals that once inhabited the rainforests are gone, it’s clear that humans can play a meaningful biological role there. This requires us to integrate into our environment, rather than to transform our environment to suit our wishes. This is the difference between hunter-gatherers and industrial civilization. Tribes that inhabit the rainforest can play a meaningful ecological role, as long as they do not have access to destructive modern technologies.

So what can humans in industrial civilization do? We could stop the practice of bottom trawling, which was actually illegal in medieval times. Instead we could build artificial coral reefs in the ocean and restore oyster reefs. We could abandon tillage and transition to regenerative agriculture.

In addition to this, we could reimplement trade barriers and rely on locally produced food, whose seeds can be reused in their native environment. This would encourage people to reintegrate into their native environment. Free trade, globalization and supranationalism are hugely prohibitive to this goal. It encourages migration of people into cities and foreign countries, away from lands with which they have a natural relationship. It also replaces an organic sense of belonging with a spiritual emptiness that is medicated through consumerism and greed.

I am quite convinced that people can intuitively understand what a healthy environment looks like. The problem we face is not preordained, but rather, a consequence of the fundamental values of our culture, which favors isolation of mankind from nature over reintegration. To put it bluntly, this culture teaches men that the goal in life for them to aspire to is to occupy some petty paper-pushing position in an office, rather than to stick their hands into the soil and become part of the living natural world. Catastrophe is a choice we make.